On 7/24/06, Dan Cross <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip>
0) A browser. 1) Some office suite application or applications. Sure, *I* can edit my documents in sam or acme and do markup using troff or tex or some other such thing, but you ever try emailing a troff document to a non-technical colleague? Or one who comes from a Windows only background? These are the same people who may email me an MS word document with embedded graphics, or a PowerPoint presentation, or an Excel spreadsheet. Or a Visio graphic. You get the picture; I can control the format of the output I produce output, and thus can get away with using Plan 9. But I can't control others, who may send me something I need to see, read, watch or listen to, but can't do so under Plan 9. 2) An IM client (I worked at a job where we used AIM for internal company communications; actually, two of my jobs used it. Believe it or not, it was highly effective. Sure, the protocol sucks, but we could "talk" to one another on a daily basis). 3) I use Mathematica a lot. That's critical for me. 4) I hate to say it, but sometimes I need C++, or Objective-C, or any number of other languages that I just don't have either compilers or interpreters for under Plan 9. 5) Any number of players of various multimedia formats. 6) A mail client that can do GnuPG or OpenPGP or whatever. 7) Any number of other applications....
<snip> This appears to be quite a complete list. I second everything on the list, with the inclusion of some other apps (circuit design stuff). IM is important, because it's the best way to reach my friends. Media players--huge. I love my media. On the same note, some decent filesharing interfaces would be good, like Direct Connect. Wonder how that could be implemented the Plan 9 Way? Allow searching by grepping a file, and have all the clients mapped in a directory tree? Hmm. Although I like the acme mail client and even find 'mail' useful, I could really do with something beefier before making the switch--I'm gonna do the bad thing and utter the words "Thunderbird-like" Well, there's MY 2 cents, take it or leave it.
John -- TANSTAAFL! (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!)
